Too close for comfort

· The knives are out for Into University Partnerships, the private company that jointly runs three universities' language centres for foreign students. First, it was attacked by academics who feared a drop in academic standards, lower pay and their centres being turned into language schools for teenagers. Now Into has been told off - twice - over its adverts. The Advertising Standards Authority has upheld a complaint about an ad that described Into as a "university-led initiative". (This was misleading because the partnerships between Into and universities are joint ventures.) Then this month jobs.ac.uk, which advertises academic jobs, changed an ad that claimed Into's partnerships with the universities of East Anglia, Exeter and Newcastle were "thriving". The partnerships had been going for too short a time to be described in this way, it said.

· Last week's election fever doesn't excuse the headline on a press release whizzed out by the University and College Union: "Gordon Brown must invest in English language courses." Steady on! Everyone knows the chancellor speaks with a Caledonian burr, and that, from time to time, like any politician, he spouts the sort of twaddle that ordinary people would blush to find coming out of their mouths. But he has always been perfectly intelligible. There's never been any suggestion that he needs to splash out on an Esol course.

· Notebook has learned that Dr Richard Barbrook is to stay at the University of Westminster, despite being made redundant two years ago by the school of media, arts and design. After two years of talks between the university and the unions, UCU asked members to vote for industrial action. The reprieve came very suddenly last Wednesday, from the vice-chancellor, Dr Geoffrey Copeland. Barbrook will now be redeployed to the school of social sciences, humanities and language. As it happens, the result of the UCU ballot was due that very morning. Exactly two hours after Copeland's announcement came the result: 62% in favour of a strike, 76% in favour of action short of a strike. Naturally, this must be a coincidence.

· One person who's not at all impressed with the generosity of Sir Philip Green in putting £5m into the retail skills academy in London's Oxford Street is UCU's current joint general secretary Paul Mackney, who told us last week: "If he paid [UK] taxes, he'd be putting a lot more than £5m into public services." The BBC's Money Programme calculated that Green and his family had saved £285m by living for part of the year in Monaco, whose residents don't pay income tax. You could build a lot of schools and colleges for £285m.